We’re always looking for a little bit of an advantage over our pea-sized brained adversaries so we’re willing to try the high-tech approach to try to gain a little over the millions of years of instinct (and a REALLY good nose) that the trout has. So recently I ran across this app called Ryple. (Yes, pronounced like ripple – the water, not the wine…) It purports to give us an edge up to 7 days in advance for choosing the best spots to go fishing (US data only at this time.) Sort of a high-tech take on the Farmer’s Almanac. Well, since it’s an app for my iPhone, I’m game to try it. $2.99 in the iTunes store. I download it, open it with great expectations, run through the short tutorial and… bust! There’s no data for Alaska! Only the lower 48! I am totally bummed…

Ryple – When to Fish!

So I post on Facebook about the app, mentioning the lack of data for Alaska and how I thought this might be cool, but could they PLEASE add data for the only place I really want to fish? Surprise! Within about 2 days I got a very nice email from the Developer saying that it WAS supposed to have data for Alaska but there had been problems getting the data from here in the correct format for the program to use. They were working on it and should have the problem fixed shortly so I could pin down exactly where to go and what time of which day to be assured of catching that 35″ rainbow I’ve been searching for for the last 30+ years. (Well, he didn’t say that exactly… But he DID raise my hopes! Actually their Terms and Conditions pretty much dash the idea that they absolutely know where all the fish live and when they’re hungry, but they’re making an educated guess based on a myriad of factors that may or may not have anything to do with anything but it makes a pretty app and could possibly help…)

Anyway, I let the app languish on my phone for a couple of weeks wondering if maybe I should have bought a pack of new Hevi-Beads with that $2.99 instead of another app to go with the 200+ other ones on my phone… (Yes, I use them all. Well some of them.)

So this morning I happened to think about Ryple again so I called it up and opened it. And son-of-a-gun if there isn’t little Data Fish scattered around my screen now! I anxiously clicked on one and went through all the screens and yup – if I go to the outlet of Kenai Lake tomorrow between 10 and 1 I have an excellent chance of catching something besides a cold! Yay!

So am I endorsing this app? Well, not yet. It has to help me catch something first and it’s still a little early to head to the river for a float… But I WILL wring this out over the summer and see how it does.

Now, one thing I can tell you now after spending 20 minutes or so looking around the app – Alaskan data is sparse. Kenai river has 4 data points. Sixmile creek has one, and there are none on the Russian, or on the Parks Highway or Susitna streams. But that’s ok, since they haven’t found out about my secret spots yet – those that only my closest thousand friends know about… So although it’s a little thin on Alaskan data, there’s plenty of potential there. I’m not throwing out that Farmer’s Almanac just yet!